


The Shopkeeper's Tale

by Silverweave



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Blink, Gen, Missing Scene, Season/Series 03, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-03
Updated: 2012-03-03
Packaged: 2017-11-01 01:31:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverweave/pseuds/Silverweave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"...Things happening. Well… four things. Well, four things and a lizard."</i>
</p>
<p>A Blink centred one-shot, or; what Martha and the Doctor did with those arrows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shopkeeper's Tale

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ignipes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/gifts).



> A drabble that sort of exploded a little, written for ignipes because we made each other. Read her lovely Jack-centric fic, [The World and the Child](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12957).

~~~  
 _"He was a nice man," they all said, after he disappeared. "Kept himself to himself."_

_But lovely with the children? "Oh yes, lovely with the children."_

_And not in that way that faintly triggers the subconscious terrors of the mind, either._

_"Lovely with the children. Let them hold the rabbits whenever they wanted to. They all wanted to be vets, you know."_

_They never found him. Three of the parents and a teacher took over the shop together, helped find homes for all the animals. Ted wouldn't have wanted them to go to a shelter, they'd said._

_The rumours about the man in the long coat, the girl and the big blue box outlived the hamsters._

~~~

"But what are they?!" Martha said with increasing exasperation as she hunted through yet another armaments chest.

"I told you, they're things."

"Things are bikes. Stuff you can't find, or trip over. You forget things, you don't hunt through badly labelled bottles of poisons and antidotes looking for ways to kill them!"

"Oh look who knows it all!" The Doctor grunted in mock consternation, rolling his eyes. "Not just things, _Things._ As in trouble with a capital T," the Doctor said, before emerging from behind a row of suits of armour, brandishing two quivers of arrows with a flourish. "Got them! Found that poison yet?"

"I don't know, your handwriting's terrible," Martha said, squinting at the small jar filled with a viscous purple liquid in her hand, "No wonder you call yourself Doctor."

"You wound me, Martha Jones." The Doctor joined her, taking the jar from her hands. "This is the stuff. See! 'Thingamajig.' Clear as day."

"Thingamajig? You're having a laugh now. "

Grinning, the Doctor slipped the jar into his pocket and handed her a quiver of arrows. "Come on."

~~~

_It was such a shame, really._

_The animals truly were lovely. Never bit. Friendliest hamsters you'd ever wish to meet. Guinea pigs that didn't wheep like a burglar alarm anytime someone came within two feet of their hutch. Goldfish that didn't die the weekend you bought them home. And the cockatiels all jabbered away merrily, proper sentences and everything! Of course the fact they jabbered away about Nietzsche and Plato was a little unusual, granted, but they were ever so polite._

_But there was one thing they were all agreed on._

_The lizards were just a bit weird._

~~~

"Hold it! Hold it!" said the Doctor, laying his quiver down momentarily while he retied his shoelace, taking the chance to catch his breath.

"You're the one who said we had to hurry!"

"Hurry yes, sprint, no," The Doctor replied and jogged to catch her up, making yet another mental note never to become human again. "You know you really should have encouraged John Smith to take more exercise."

Martha stopped dead and stared at him. "Oh, I'm sorry! Must have slipped my mind between scrubbing the floors and getting up at five thirty to make your breakfast!"

"Oh…yeah." The Doctor looked sheepish. "Well, I'll make it up to you. Soon as we've got Things taken care here. Take you to Villengard for a breakfast fit for a queen; the things those people can do with a banana, amazing, really it should be made illegal-"

"- Are we still talking about food?" Martha asked with a grin, enjoying the tiniest expression of shock that wrinkled the Doctor's features before striding off again.

"Yes!" The Doctor replied with feigned indignation as Martha hailed a cab with the particular enviable ease of a good looking girl in great skirt.

"Come on," she said, holding the cab door open for the Doctor. "Short cut."

The Doctor joined her, frowning distractedly at the window display of the pet shop by the cab before ducking inside it. "I haven't got any money."

"Imagine my lack of surprise," Martha said clambering in after him. "You know, John Smith may have been a bit wet but at least he knew a thing or two about chivalry."

"I know all about chivalry! Are we or are we not on the way to sort out a dragon?"

"No. We're on are way to slay some Things."

"That's item one. Our to-do list just got longer."

~~~

_Looking back, it was an ordinary day, they said. Nice for this time of year; hot, sunny. Birds in a blue sky._

_The man and the girl weren't even that strange. Lovely boots, she was wearing. Gorgeous skirt. He could do with a haircut, possibly._

_There was something, one of the adults had thought, that was a little unusual._

_I mean, honestly. You had to be blind, naïve or stupid to not have noticed the way young people were carrying knives around these days. The parents didn't want to see metal detectors spring up in their schools, but there was no doubt street violence was on the increase. They'd heard about the riot at Deffrey Vale. The car driven through the gates. The exploding dinnerladies- although they admitted that didn't make an awful lot of sense even in this weird wild world._

_But really? Who carries arrows?_

~~~

"Everything all right?" Martha asked as they ran down the hill towards the park.

"Yup, yup fine," the Doctor replied, roughly forcing the folder Sally had given him inside his surprisingly spacious pocket. "Just another job for the to-do list. Might have to put off Villengard for another day. Now. Where was I?"

"Rifts in reality."

"Right! Well, you get them. Spots where the spaces between universes are a bit thinner, or damaged. Sometimes it makes time rifts, sometimes rifts in space. Very occasionally you get both and then you get all sorts of Things living there. Creatures attracted by the mere idea of chaos."

Martha nodded it in, taking it all in as they ran back to the path where they'd first seen the nest. "Sound like the Things in the Discworld. Drawing off magic."

The Doctor looked over his shoulder at her with a knowing grin. "Where d'you think he got the idea from?"

"Seriously?"

"Good old Terry. Haven't seen him in years! Brilliant with a bow and arrow, you wouldn’t believe it."

The Doctor and Martha stopped at the base of the old oak tree standing alone in the centre of the large grassy lawn and looked up. Four Things, a mixture of primeval evolution and a car boot sale, lay sleeping in the upper boughs of the tree, a clutch of wispy egg sacs, doubled in number and size since they'd first spotted them.

"So these Things, they live near these spacetime rifts?"

"They sit there, waiting, for actuality storms."

"Which are?"

"Sort of like a wormhole, but one that moves. Or a cyclone, picking up bits and pieces from time and space dumping them wherever, in this case London.

"And The Things hitch a ride?"

"Which is not good news for London because they grow like there's no tomorrow and breed like bunnies at a fertility festival."

Martha grimaced at the image. "Nice."

"Believe me, we're lucky only one female dropped through. But they'll be plenty more of those soon." The Doctor wondered aloud as he retrieved the jar of Thingamajig from his pocket and carefully unscrewed the top. "Unless we do something about it."

Martha followed the Doctor's lead and dipped her arrows' heads in the thick gloopy liquid, letting them dry quickly in the open air before returning all but one to her quiver.

"Now," asked the Doctor selecting an arrow and inexpertly fumbling it into place, "You sure you know how to use these? Not very twenty-first century."

Martha flexed her bow once more before slipping the arrow smoothly on the guide and taking aim high into the trees.

The first Thing let out a freakish scream and dropped dead from the boughs, landing in a splodgy mess at the Doctor's feet, Martha's arrow still vibrating in its side.

"University Archery Club, three years running." Martha smiled at him with a wily grin. "It's possible I've done this before."

"Right, well," said the Doctor, his voice a perfect mixture of surprise and proud admiration. "Nice shot."

~~~  
 _  
Actually, when they stopped to think about it, Ted's coming had been just as strange as his parting._

_No family. No friends in the area. Most people living in this part of London had grown up in this part of London. It was nice. A community._

_But Ted? Why, he practically came out of nowhere. That day there was the meteor shower, wasn't it? The one that didn't seem to be visible anywhere else in London._

_Funny that.  
_  
~~~

The silver bell rang with a satisfyingly high-pitched jingle as the Doctor and Martha entered the pet shop.

"Are we getting a hamster?"

"No!"

"What about a goldfish. Or a snake? I like snakes. Me and Leo always wanted one but Mum wouldn't let us."

"We're not getting a snake either. Or a kitten, or a budgie." He looked deliberately over at Martha and raised his eyebrows facetiously. "I've already got one pet, thank you and you're trouble enough."

"Pet?!!" Martha's mouth dropped open in a textbook O! of disbelief. "Right! See if I save your life again!"

"Can I help you find something?"

"Ah, hello!" The Doctor beamed at the kindly-face gentleman in front of them. "You would be Ted, I presume? Of Ted's Pet Emporium?"

"That would be me, yes. Can I help you?"

"I was looking for a lizard. Particular type, pretty rare round these parts. Rainbow Cloudstorms, capable of generating their own miniature microclimates. Usually only found in the meadows of the Moxy Delta planet system."

Ted's expression of shock echoed that of Martha's, his green eyes filtering with soft pink. The Doctor smiled again warmly, as if in the presence of an old friend, long parted.

"I'm the Doctor and this is Martha. And I was wondering, Ted, if you would like a lift home?"

~~~  
 _  
The note was nice._

_Thanking them for being his friends, for looking after him, for looking after his animals. Telling them not to worry. Of course they did, course they did, they were Human, that's what they do; they care, so they worried._

_But not for long. Because that's the other thing Humans do._

_They forget._

~~~

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LiveJournal 30th June 2007.
> 
> _  
> My other Doctor Who fics are in the process of being migrated, mostly backdated.  
> _


End file.
